Stone Circle When the sun sets

<3 thanks for starting, my friend!

Something was amiss around them, beneath them, inside the ground. For all her years as a naturalist - and those years being all her years alive - she had never once observed the earth to creak and groan like it did now, except for when the Glacier had fallen and entombed her in the tunnels of Duskfire. And there were the rockslides and landslides she had witnessed, of course; erosion of cliffs, and of mountainsides, that sent hordes of earth cascading down the rocky face into the forests and oceans below.

But Easthollow was not a glacier, and Easthollow - in all her understanding - was not built upon tunnels. They were not a mountain, they did not erode - so something else caused the tremors, and while the unknown stirred an air of anxiety through many of the family here, she instead felt a morbid curiosity, and a hunger to learn.

Yet these investigations would have to wait; for now, her duties stood with Valette. Stark light filtered between the stones as the final rays of sun snuffed out behind the distant hills. She perched herself in silence against @Siarut's side, their fur just brushing, and she took in the family tucked around them with calm, discerning eyes. Counting them, observing them, and memorizing faces, names, and voice -

And that was one she did not recognize - loud, and apologetic - and when she turned --

Nanook blinked, multiple times, because she -

had never seen -

- and yet had memorized -

Her eyes. And she blinked again, this time with a startled jerk. No, no, no, this was not her - for she had seen her mother die - and finally her memory caught up, and the mercenary quickly corrected, "Sorry - you must be Arlette." For that was one of the names Val had given her, yes - Merrit and Arlette - and even if she hadn't already met Merrit stalking along the border, and looking so much like Stark, from size and form to the very way he seemed to brood - she still would have guessed - would have known - this one was Arlette.

Scarlett. Arlette. And she laughed, though she wanted to cry? And her face grew hot, and her eyes felt wet, and her mouth wavered into a sort of grin that didn't seem entirely sure of what it wanted to be, either, and she added on a quiet, "Sorry." Perhaps she understood; perhaps she had heard enough of how she looked so much like her grandmother, and perhaps Arlette would see family in Nanook's face as well. After all, as Arlette bore the memory of Scarlett in her eyes, so Nanook would always carry Kove.